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CONSTRUCTOR OF WORLDS

PROLOGUE

...Neither a city, nor a state, nor a planet, nor a star, nor a star system, and not even a galaxy! I have created a galaxy cluster! A huge part of the entire cosmos! No living being has ever made such a large-scale breakthrough that I have made! And you have no idea how real it is…

Mr. Abdullah

September 2009.

Mr. Alexander Vasilyevich Belov was standing on the deck of his ship «Octopus». His gaze was directed towards the vast expanses of the Indian Ocean. Belov himself was a wealthy man and already at the age of 37 was able to earn a fortune. He was of medium height, with black hair and a small beard. His eyes reflected all his thirst for power, although he treated his employees well, of whom he had quite a few, but he really liked to feel like a ruler.

From a young age, Alexander Vasilyevich was looking for methods to implement his plans and he managed to open several of his oil plants. Although he was not known, but he was not a small-scale supplier. But now he was interested in something more. He wanted to create his own spaceport and draw almost inexhaustible resources directly from the cosmic expanses!

It was already evening, a great time for observations, and Alexander Vasilyevich was peering into the sky. He was holding a glass of port wine in his hands, leaning on the railing of the veranda of the captain’s bridge. Suddenly his phone rang, it was his scientific adviser, a young researcher Leonid Rodionovich Gasparov.

— I’m listening to you.

— Hello Alexander Vasilyevich, this is Leonid Gasparov. I wanted to inform you that the preparation of the second block of the observatory is almost ready.

— Fine, one more step on the way to my goal…

— You mean our goal?

— Exactly, because your project of the newest cosmodrome with these things of yours gave me such grandiose opportunities.

— But this is being done for the purpose of exploring outer space and expanding the capabilities of all mankind, because this is the goal we indicated in the documents, if you remember.

— You’re a fool, Leonid! — being intoxicated, the tycoon shouted. — I needed this to take over this world! Space is a gold mine, and I will become the only billionaire on a cosmic scale! And even now, knowing my real purpose, you won’t be able to do anything, because the island is guarded by my people. I didn’t need anything more than blueprints.

— It can’t be! You deceived me!

— Of course! You don’t have long to live! Ha-ha-ha! The billionaire laughed menacingly.

Just as he was about to call the guards, the «Octopus» shuddered, as if pierced by an electric current. Its entire surface trembled, as the human body trembles under the action of an electric discharge. The waves raged and lightning bolts struck the ship terrifyingly.

Only now did this man realize what he was worth. But as if this was not enough, something huge appeared from under the waves, and it began to rise. With fear in his eyes, unable to run, Alexander Vasilyevich stood still, on both sides he was engulfed by flames that had already made their way into the captain’s cabin. A huge monster rose up in front of him right from the depths of the ocean! It was a giant dragon with 5 heads, he spread his giant wings from behind, and tons of water descended over his body like jets. Glowing red eyes stared menacingly in the direction of the ship. When the monster rose to the level of its chest, it was at least 300 meters high!

With his huge paw, he swung at the ship and in an instant tore the Octopus apart, the owner of the ship flew out from such a blow and scrambled trying to stay afloat! A huge mass was drowning in the ocean, creating a whirlpool, and the monster watched this picture without losing a single moment of this agony. The fire had already been extinguished. Very close by was a torn-up stern, where water was pouring in with a roar, then guns and safety bulkheads; crowds of black ghosts were rushing around parts of the upper deck. The unfortunate ones were climbing the shrouds, clinging to the masts, floundering in the water.

It was a human anthill suddenly flooded with water! The unfortunate ship began to sink rapidly. Here the marts appeared, plastered with victims, yards bent by bulking people, and, finally, the top of the main mast. The dark mass was covered under the water with all its crew of the dead, overwhelmed by a terrible whirlpool. And the monster, this terrible judge who caused a thunderstorm, a real archangel of revenge, did not take his eyes off the sinking ship…

At that moment, a giant huge bird appeared in the sky, there was a feeling that this bird was in the sky itself, it occupied a quarter of the entire sky. Gasparov, who was standing on the upper veranda, froze in place from what he saw. Belov, who was thrown away from the whirlpool, also saw this. But before he could say a word, a bright bird burst into flames, and such a bright flash blinded the greedy billionaire.

Gasparov was abruptly thrown by the wind from such a flash, inside the observatory, and he saw with his own eyes how the metal floor where the light hit just melted! When Gasparov got up, large clouds of smoke were visible in the distance, the last thing left of the «Octopus». And the huge bird mysteriously disappeared, just as the monster disappeared.

Chapter one. Beginning

I don’t think that the same excitement can pass through the human heart that an inventor feels when watching how successfully the creation of the brain works.

Nikola Tesla

It was 1965. Twenty years have passed since the Great Patriotic War, and the consequences still remain in the hearts of good people.

The village family just had their first son. He was healthy and very noisy, crying all the time, and his skin was pink like a pig. The mother doted on the child and not an hour passed that she did not take him in her arms and did not rock him. My father just smiled at his wife’s energy and the fire in her eyes.

His father, Alexander Fedorovich, worked as a local policeman, after the war he immediately moved here to the Tver region in order to forget the native places where his dead brothers and mother lived. Mother, Elena Nikolaevna, was born and raised here. She received a secondary education and started working in a local grocery store.

Their house was neither old nor new. A firm man’s hand repaired a leaky roof, dug a vegetable garden and painted a fence with whitewash. An elegant female hand cleaned, cooked, took care of plants in the garden and chickens in the chicken coop.

Their house was a small hut. It was brick, and the roof was wooden, and sometimes rotted. The yard was large and was always being prepared for a vegetable garden, it was surrounded by a wooden fence. There was also an old bathhouse, completely blackened from the inside, and the ceiling is so low that if you climb on the canopy, you need to bend in the back and neck. There were two sheds in front of the bathhouse, chickens lived in one, and Alexander Fedorovich kept tools in the second, so there was a workbench nearby. The stump in the middle of it all stood out even more vividly, firewood was always neatly stacked next to it and sometimes a chicken was slaughtered.

Years passed, their boy grew up. Called Vadim. The boy is already eight years old, and looks like an adult with serious eyes. Alexander Fedorovich always saw in his son an excellent employee and brought him up accordingly. Elena Nikolaevna spoiled the boy and allowed him to do almost anything. Parents quarreled on this topic more than once, but they quickly ended, because the parents loved each other madly, and the hostess of the house was pregnant again.

Vadim wanted a brother to play with and fight with the neighborhood boys. Elena Nikolaevna wanted a daughter, and Alexander Fedorovich also wanted a son.

Vadim liked to play with the boys on the street and always came late and with bruises. Sometimes I went fishing with them or with my father. The boy was strong in health and body and already helped around the house. He carried barrels of water home, dug in the garden and climbed on the roof to fix a leaky roof.

«That’s not how you hold an axe,» my father once said when they were chopping wood together in the yard of the house.

— And how? Vadim asked, looking at the axe.

Alexander Fedorovich wiggled his mustache and roughly turned the axe point down.

— That’s it, — the father replied with a sneer, «chop it up.

Vadim started chopping firewood. At first, it was difficult for the boy to do this. Iron got stuck in the wood, and splinters flew in spite of the face and eyes. Alexander Fedorovich took out another axe and began chopping wood together with his son. An adult man did it much better and faster. After a few minutes, Alexander Fedorovich’s pile of firewood became larger than Vadim’s.

«Remember, son,» he said later at home over a plate of borscht, his black moustache stained with red broth. — the axe should be held firmly, and the blows should be smooth and strong so that the wood gives in better.

My father was often not at home, and my mother stayed late for a part-time job in a store, then it was tight with money. Alexander Fedorovich reproached his wife for this, because she is in a position, and to work harder than he himself at work. Elena Nikolaevna was a fragile woman, but strong in spirit, and also too stubborn to put her own good in priority.

«Remember, son,» he said later at home over a plate of borscht, his black moustache stained with red broth. — the axe should be held firmly, and the blows should be smooth and strong so that the wood gives in better.

My father was often not at home, and my mother stayed late for a part-time job in a store, then it was tight with money. Alexander Fedorovich reproached his wife for this, because she is in a position, and to work harder than he himself at work. Elena Nikolaevna was a fragile woman, but strong in spirit, and also too stubborn to put her own good in priority.

After that, Alexander Fedorovich showed Vadim how to slaughter chickens. To do this, he took out an axe and sharpened it properly. The boy by this time was incomprehensibly holding a chicken in his hands.

— Are we going to chop wood? — he asked then.

— No, something else,» he shook his head and took the bird by the neck.

The chicken let out a hoarse sigh and tried to escape by flapping its wings.

— I’m holding a chicken, and you hit her in the neck with the sharp part of an axe. — said Alexander Fedorovich, opening a view of the chicken’s thin neck.

«She’s going to die,» Vadim said in surprise, clutching a heavy axe to his chest.

— Yes, but it will serve us well, think about it this way, — the father raised his eyebrows, shrugging his shoulders. — Well!

Vadim hesitantly raised the axe and hit the chicken in the neck. Her blood immediately flowed down the stump, but the bird itself had not died yet, but was making death cries.

— Well, who cuts like that! — the man roared and the boy shuddered from this cry and hit much harder.

The chicken died, and its head lay apart from the body and vomited blood.

Then it was a cold autumn day, and Elena Nikolaevna sent her son to the first grade to study. Vadim didn’t like this business, but he received only good grades in Russian. His father flogged him for bad ones, and his mother tried to somehow mitigate the punishment.

Months passed, and Elena Nikolaevna’s stomach swelled even more. She was already sitting only at home, and Alexander Fedorovich worked for two. One day, coming home, he gave Vadim a red, good ball. The boy immediately went to play with friends near the house. Then a dacha of some rich man was being built nearby and trucks very often drove along the roads of the village. They raised whole clouds of smoke that smelled terrible, and their engine roared very loudly in the street.

Vadim was playing with friends right by the road, on a patch of land. There was no grass growing there, only bare earth was here. The boys thought it was a great place to play and started kicking the ball very far away. Alexander Fedorovich then sat on a bench near the house to watch his son from afar, he rejoiced at his victories and was sad from failures. And so the red ball rolled out onto the road, Vadim ran after him, and a truck with bricks was passing on this road. The father immediately exploded from the spot.

— Vadim! Vadim, my mother! My father was shouting, he was angry and panicked. As a man at war, he gathered himself and ran to his child, who did not hear his screams and hoped that he would have time to take the ball from the ground.

The driver clearly did not see where he was going and did not pay attention to the people who were crawling like bugs under his wheels. Alexander Fedorovich pushed Vadim hard in the chest, and the frightened boy looked at his father, who was angry. The car hit him, running over a massive wheel. Blood and open fractures were visible. Vadim’s friends fell silent, and someone even screamed and cried.

Vadim did not cry or scream, he was in shock. The driver of the car got out and cursed loudly, Elena Nikolaevna ran out of the house.

— Sasha! Sasha! — she kept saying, throwing herself under the wheels of the truck. She grabbed the driver by the breasts and started screaming and fell from powerlessness.

She became ill and went into labor. The driver swore again and ran to the doctor immediately. Vadim was still in the same shock, he dropped the ball and fell to his knees next to his mother. She kept repeating her husband’s name as if she had a fever.

Vadim did not remember this day very well, everything was like in a fog. The fate of the driver did not bother him, just like the birth of his sister. He remembers his father’s funeral very well. A wooden coffin, a priest, a cold father’s body and a pale face. Elena Nikolaevna sobbed loudly and buried her nose in her mother’s shoulder. Tears were also streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. Many friends of Alexander Fedorovich came to this funeral, as if the weather was also mourning Vadim’s father, sending heavy raindrops and cold wind on people’s heads. Then they said goodbye to his corpse and sent him on his way. Buried, left lush bouquets and left a cross.

The wake began. The closest people of the deceased gathered for lunch to Elena Nikolaevna, who rushed around the house and managed to set the table for the guests and calm her daughter. On the table with a white tablecloth were pancakes, rice with raisins, porridge and borscht, a plate of bread and tea…

After all this, the mother could not see her son next to her. She blamed him for all her sorrows, even her grandmother could not bring her to reason and soon died of the flu herself. Elena Nikolaevna could no longer feed her children alone on the salary of a saleswoman. There was not enough time for the garden, nor for the children, nor for myself. Vadim and his sister Anya did not go hungry, but their food on the table became noticeably poorer in its variety.

Reluctantly, Elena Nikolaevna gave Vadim to an orphanage. The boy didn’t cry. He was young, but he knew exactly what was going on. He understood that he was seeing his mother and sister for the last time and said goodbye properly, without yawning and shouts of indignation. Vadim understood that without him, Anya would be able to get enough food and warmth from her mother, but he would somehow cope on his own.

It was raining fine that day, and Elena Nikolaevna had no face. She gives her blood, her son to an unfamiliar place. Then orphanages were poorly funded, and it was great luck to live under a good roof and eat soup with bread and meat.

A year passed, and Vadim got used to his situation. He did not stop thinking about his family and often poured those unshed tears into his pillow, he was madly homesick for his father. The orphanage was not poor and not rich, often the boys were driven to work in the fields or to repair holes in the fence and roof. So they gained experience in construction and not only.

The building was brick with an iron roof, these plates were rusty and some had holes. The walls were covered with charcoal, there were not only inscriptions, but also children’s drawings that no one erased. The perimeter was surrounded by a fence, which was painted once a year. There was a garden where children could play and eat the fruits of apple trees.

The situation inside was quite good. Because of the l-shaped shape of the building, a lot of children who lost their parents could be placed there. There was a kitchen, a common dining room, common rooms for sleeping, and the playground was on the street, as our reader remembers. The teachers had their own room, there was a samovar and an old radio.

Vadim continued to go to school, but to another one. The boy dreamed of becoming a fisherman and catching the best fish and selling it. He talked about this to his friends in the common room, and they talked for a long time about which fish is more expensive. The teachers only quietly laughed at him, because now you can’t get normal money in this profession. Sometimes they spoke directly to Vadim, saying that he would be an excellent teacher of the Russian language, because he had good grades in this subject. The boy then did not really understand the difference in professions, despite the mature outlook on life.

Vadim was respected in their orphanage, there were many children who asked him for help with Russian. Of course, he helped them just like that, because he appreciated their friendship, and he didn’t know how to take something in return yet.

In his spare time, Vadim did various things like climbing trees and helping the cook in the kitchen. The cook was an extremely pleasant person to communicate with. He was bearded and spoke with a funny accent, only then the boy at an already mature age will understand that he was talking to a Kazakh man. His name was Davlet, and he was a former cook and sailed in very distant lands. A cook is a position on a ship, this man cooked food for the whole crew, but when necessary, he fought on cables, boarded ships and received his share in robberies on various merchant ships. It seems that such people were called pirates and it was safe to say that Davlet looked like him.

He was scarred and healthy, but gray-haired and smelled of alcohol all the time. He talked a lot about his adventures and instilled in the boy a passion for reading adventure books, headed by a story about sailors, pirates and treasures.

Vadim changed his mind about the profession and decided that he would become a sailor and sail, blown by a cold breeze and feel a salty taste on his lips all the time.

At school, he had problems with the exact sciences, such as mathematics and drawing. With the rest, he more or less coped. And it just so happened that he got into a class where there were children with their parents, and Vadim became a frequent object of ridicule and bullying. The boy was calm and quiet during his school years, but could have rebuffed even three bullies in the classroom. He just didn’t want to have problems with the director, with their parents, and to be ambushed after school by grown-up guys who decided to avenge younger friends or brothers. Therefore, he came with bruises, but with a smile on his face, because the day was still interesting.

Vadim was also good at telling stories when he and his friends went to the forest to burn sticks and fry sausages, which they hid in the pockets of shorts or pants to carry past adults. The boy told stories about pirates and their adventures.

In the summer, when the forest bloomed with its greenery, when the river finally froze and the ice melted, the boys went fishing and swimming. The stream there was not so strong and there were a lot of fish, Vadim caught them more than once with his bare hands or accidentally stepped on the fry while he was getting out of the water.

The boy didn’t need anything and he grew up like an ordinary child, but some emptiness and resentment towards his mother still remained. Vadim did not try to find her or escape from the orphanage, no one adopted him. He saw his future without his mother and sister, but he still loved and missed them, they sometimes dream of him in a dream, in them he imagines a house, father, mother and sister with smiles from ear to ear, and a vegetable garden and fragrant trees with grass and flowers bloom around.

The orphanage was also surrounded by greenery, but not as lush as at home, it was sparse and yellowish, and the trees grew far away in the forest a kilometer away. Firs, oaks, and birches grew there. The boys made swords out of their sticks and played knights or pirates.

Such was Vadim’s childhood and youth. But soon his life will change unexpectedly and irrevocably…

Chapter two. Teacher

At the age of twenty-two, Vadim was well built and had some popularity. But nevertheless, he did not allow himself to look at anyone. It was like a mantra that he repeated every time. And it wasn’t that he didn’t like the girls, on the contrary, he noticed their beauty and strength, but he was afraid of something more and didn’t really like children.

It is a strange irony that he eventually joined the Russian language teacher after graduation. Vadim had a rented house and moved to Tver, where he taught his subject. The apartment was small and rather dusty. The air here was musty, so as soon as Vadim arrived here, he opened the windows on the balcony. No one lived in this apartment and therefore the man was left to himself and only. He came here with a heavy, black briefcase, which he still had since his studies. In this briefcase he kept a mug, a brush, toothpaste, a diary, a pen and clothes.

Life played a cruel joke with the young teacher, already at twenty-eight, when Vadim had experience in teaching and settled in the city, he was diagnosed with a hereditary disease, because of which his vision was lost faster. Therefore, he wore glasses and began to look older, and when he began to grow a beard, he looked like a forty-year-old.

At school, he showed good abilities in communicating with children, he taught in high school, and students always thanked him for his patience and calm character. In the circle of teachers, he was remembered as a gloomy and thoughtful man who, when he was on duty in the corridor of the school, wrote something in his diary.

The school itself was old, built since the war. Its walls were with peeling wallpaper, but gradually they were replaced with newer ones. The ceiling was crumbling, but this was also fixed. The floor was stone, the doors were wooden. The school was not very big, but it could accommodate more than three hundred children, which is the limit for this school personally.

Vadim gradually settled into a new place, as already mentioned, old things began to appear in his musty apartment. There wasn’t much that could be bought for a teacher’s salary, but over time Vadim learned to be content with little. He had a small kitchen combined with a dining room, there was a samovar on the table. Vadim was sleeping on the sofa, which he bought at a discount, because the spring in it was broken. What the man was proud of was an old radio, it was covered with duct tape and peeling paint, but for him this purchase was very successful.

He did not go outside, just looked through the balcony at how children were playing on the playground or how people were coming from work. Cars were passing by, they were making loud noises with their motors under the windows of houses. Vadim had no friends among his neighbors, they came to him only on business, buy potatoes or borrow honey and sugar. The neighbors were good, although some were often noisy. Then, slowly, televisions appeared in every family, but the man did not have the money to buy it, because when he bought a couple of books on sale, he again became infected with the idea of swimming.

He won’t be able to be a sailor or a pirate anymore, but he still wants to feel this breeze and salt on his lips. The Volga River was just passing through the city. And it’s not so difficult to buy a ticket for a liner, it’s left to save exactly a thousand rubles and you can go on the road.

Despite such successes in life, but there were also hardships. The death of his father never left Vadim’s soul. The father, like a ghost, came after his son and haunts him in dreams. In nightmares, he sees his mother and sister, he woke up in a cold sweat on his couch in the middle of the night. Then he started smoking. He read that it helps to relieve stress, but the effect was small, the maximum removed the tremor of the hands during work.

I had to forget about the idea with the liner. Vadim could not live with this mental pain. The ghosts of his father, mother and sister, whom he barely remembers, followed him everywhere, it seemed to him that they were whispering in his ear in a particularly strong current of wind, in every rustle of leaves and the creak of snow under his shoe. Vadim became withdrawn at this point in his life, dressed even warmer, because during work he shuddered in chills. From such stress, he seemed to have aged another ten days, but he was well immune. His brown eyes had darkened and seemed just black.

As a result, when he was sitting on the couch, hunched over and thinking about a jar of change and banknotes that were on the table next to a smoking cigarette butt, Vadim decided to spend the accumulated money on a psychologist to whom he could tell about his problem. Personally, the man assumed that he was developing schizophrenia and so far he did not know how to get rid of it. He noticed the cigarette butt and angrily threw it out the window. Then I took a whole pack out of my coat and threw it in the same place so that he definitely couldn’t smoke again.

After that, he went to a psychologist and made an appointment on Friday evening, when Vadim would return after work. Of course, he will come with a loaded briefcase, but the documents and notebooks of the children will wait until night.

The psychologist had a spacious office, his own chair, coffee table and sofa. On the nightstand there was a phone and an aquarium in which a fish was splashing, there was food in an orange package next to it. The walls were covered with gray wallpaper.

The psychologist was extremely flexible in communicating with Vadim. The man was lying on the sofa, having previously taken off his shoes. The psychologist, Nikolai Mikhailovich, listened attentively to his client. Vadim spoke in a crumpled and torn manner and sometimes got up from his seat or took a sitting position, before grabbing his hair and as if tearing it out. Nevertheless, Nikolai Mikhailovich showed full tolerance for Vadim and at the end of the session expressed all his suspicions, which he sorted out by points while writing in a notebook.

— You are troubled by nightmares, you are seeing relatives, and you also have a tremor, — Nikolai Mikhailovich began. — You do have symptoms of schizophrenia, but you should not worry, only to improve your condition you need to be in public and on the street more often. You also have depression from a mental trauma, you have lost your father, nightmares are caused because of it and, perhaps, you feel guilty about what happened, try to get a pet or friends to somehow forget yourself, but I will prescribe antidepressants if folk methods do not help. — all this time, Vadim listened to the speech of the psychologist, he felt the emptiness of this conversation, as if he had expressed everything that had boiled over, but he still did not tell something in more detail.

— Thank you, Doctor, — Vadim thanked hoarsely, he managed to raise his tone while he was talking.

He got up and took a torn piece of paper from the psychologist’s notebook. Vadim said thank you again and left.

To be honest, Vadim really followed the instructions of a psychologist, as he listened to his father as a child. He didn’t get a pet, but he started going out more often and talking to people. For the sake of interest, he even went to a local bar, but apart from a black eye and a spoiled mood, he got nothing.

To some extent, Vadim began to like living like this, the tremor passed, but the nightmares still did not go away, but the man swallowed like food for lunch or dinner, they were a tasteless mass that he hid somewhere inside and it seemed that they festered and turned black. Vadim again returned to the diary, which he abandoned when he had been working at school for three years.

He took the diary outside and, sitting on a bench, wrote down thoughts, fauna around. That’s when he started writing short stories. And to be honest, I smiled at this case. He took the work for granted, did it right and did not show his anxiety, but Vadim was already used to it while he worked for six years in these walls. People here began to merge with the walls, the same white and faded. Every day he met gray and gloomy. He did not shave his beard at all, it reached the end of his neck and already fell a little on his chest.

Vadim took care of her, tied her with a blue silk ribbon, combed her with a wooden comb that he carried in his jacket pocket. The first wrinkles and barely noticeable gray hair appeared on the face. At home he continued to read, but the lines of the books turned into ordinary black, ink spots, without meaning, color and taste. Vadim could imagine anything with the help of lines from the book, the great battle, the azure and transparent seas of the Caribbean islands that are inhabited by pirates with and without honor, but gradually he could only see clumps of blots in his head.

He was saving up for a dream, gradually moving towards the goal, but without that enthusiasm in his youth. He is already thirty-four, the USSR has collapsed and a new era has begun in the Russian state, but Vadim continued to live in the past. He remembered his family, but these ghosts stopped hurting him, rather because of them he lost the meaning of his existence. He had no friends, had no family of his own, and hoped with all his heart that the descendants of his dear sister Anya were already walking on this sinful earth. He did not cry when he said goodbye to his mother and sister, it seemed that all the tears had been dried for a long time in that pillow with a blue pillowcase, in that bed of the orphanage where little Vadim slept and quietly choked with tears, but at the age of thirty-four, when he thought that nothing could surprise or impress him except for the ships on the water, as he abruptly began to cry.

It happened unexpectedly at another dry lunch, dry, because Vadim did not feel the taste of food, or rather did not revel in it as before, and now tears flowed from his cheeks. The food immediately acquired a taste, a salty taste, like the sea on which pirate ships rafted in search of merchants who had whole pockets with doubloons. He rejoiced and wept, laughed with his mouth full and wiped his tears with a handkerchief made of a cotton rag sewn with a linen piece of shirt.

It wasn’t very cultured for him, he didn’t act according to manners, but there was nothing holding him back anymore, or he rotted inside, like any other person. Only here he did not vomit clean rust or rotten giblets, no, he just kept everything, as if his stomach was burning from heartburn, perhaps it bubbled inside him like lava, because he began to add different spices to food more often, because there was no taste on his tongue.

Nevertheless, despite such mental problems, he was able to escape from this barbed wire, from which he cut and scratched harder, not without scars, of course, but alive and much stronger.

Vadim Alexandrovich worked hard every day and continued his service as a teacher, and it was already 1999. The school year will end soon, and very soon this amazing XX century. On one of these days, Vadim Alexandrovich was heading to school. Today he has 5 lessons in the morning and 6 more lessons in the afternoon and only one «window», as the teacher’s free time was called. Monday was a pretty busy day for the teacher.

After spending the first three lessons, Vadim Alexandrovich sighed, as the big break began and the children ran to the lower floor at full speed. And Vadim Alexandrovich himself was now sitting on the third floor in the 37th office. He needs to prepare for the next topic. The next class is 10 «B» and the topic is «Paronyms». Suddenly, the door opened and a middle-aged man entered the office before the bell rang. He was obviously older than Vadim, he had a bald spot on his head, and he was a little chubby. He was wearing a uniform and looked like a university teacher.

Vadim Alexandrovich sat up and decided to greet the guest by extending his hand to him. In response, the stranger also greeted and sat down next to the teacher’s desk. Vadim also sat down.

— I am Vasily Nikolaevich Ulyanov, Doctor of Philology and Professor at Tver State University.

— Vadim Alexandrovich Vavilov, teacher of Russian language and literature. Glad to meet you — they shook hands, then the professor continued:

— I know you, Vadim Alexandrovich, my grandson is studying here at your school in the 5th grade, but I’m not on this issue. The fact is that it is necessary to tell the students of your school who will be entering this year about our university, and I would like to stop at the Faculty of Philology. And don’t worry, I’ve already talked to the director and the deputy director. They advised me to contact you, and it’s worth saying that your fame as an excellent teacher of the Russian language goes far beyond this school, and I involuntarily heard about you a couple of times, so I was pleased with such a recommendation from the administration.

— I am very flattered, and thank you, Professor, but what kind of help is there on my part?

— I propose to arrange a scientific meeting for students, at which some of them, as well as teachers, could make full-fledged scientific reports. So we could demonstrate the very feeling that a scientist feels when he defends his idea. I could invite my colleagues to do this, besides, I am the head of the department myself, so I think it will not be so difficult for me to do this. But for success, I need you to organize the rest of the details of the event and it is desirable that you also prepare your own scientific report, in which I believe you will not have any special difficulties.

— Thank you, Professor, I will be very glad of such an honor. And I would like to give you my own opinion and some comments about this event. The fact is that I think it will be a little difficult for students to make scientific reports themselves, for this reason it would not be bad to organize a small circle before the date of the event itself, at which you, together with me, of course, conducted some lessons at which we could explain to children and help them prepare their scientific works. And do not forget about such an important aspect as a supervisor. In the case of students, it may be teachers, but in the case of the teachers themselves?

— In the case of the teachers themselves, a scientific supervisor is not required, or I can personally be a scientific supervisor.

— In that case, on what day do you plan to hold this event?

— If today is Thursday, then on Tuesday I think it would be best, since I have already informed the director, and after talking with you at the meeting I will inform my colleagues.

— But don’t you think it’s too fast?

— Dear Vadim Alexandrovich, I hope it won’t be difficult for you and don’t forget about the fact that studies end in May and exams begin.

«You’re right. In that case, I will be expecting you this afternoon, as we need to conduct the first lesson today.

— In that case, I will try to drive up after one couple and a meeting — the professor solemnly finished — And thank you again.

— Thank you for that — the teacher got up and saw the professor off, at that moment the bell rang and you could hear the noise of students on the stairs…

These six days flew by unnoticed, even on Sunday they diligently continued to prepare for this event. Finally, Tuesday came. Vadim Alexandrovich did not sleep all night and printed out all the reports and slides. Vasily Nikolaevich also did not sleep. The next morning, when everyone was already at school, Professor Vasily Nikolaevich and his comrades were supposed to arrive in time. Anatoly Valentinovich, the director of the school, who was the tallest person in their school, was also at this event and supervised many preparations, as members from the department of city and even regional public education were invited.

After the opening ceremony, speakers came out, among them were teachers of Russian language and literature, English teachers, and German teachers from other schools. But it was especially nice to see the students in this role. Vadim Alexandrovich stood together with Vasily Nikolaevich and watched as Vadim’s student Nikita Naumov reads his report on the role of using homonymic phrases in works and their influence on a person.

«You have prepared them well,» the professor remarked.

— Thank you Professor, but your lessons helped a lot.

— My lessons were not something special, but you have become a full-fledged supervisor and a colleague can be proud of yourself. And excuse me, but when is your report?

— Right after Nikita, I put my report last.

— Quite noble of you, — said the Doctor of Sciences.

When Vadim Alexandrovich’s turn finally came, the announcer in the role of Elina Komarova, a student of Vadim Alexandrovich, who told about lexicology, loudly announced:

— And now ladies and gentlemen, our dear teacher Vadim Alexandrovich Vavilov will make his report!

The audience enthusiastically met the teacher, everyone knew this person, though self-contained, but loving his work. The teacher enthusiastically began his report:

— Ladies and gentlemen! Dear Scientific Commission, dear guests, colleagues and our dear participants! Let me bring to your attention my report on the role of science fiction literature in the popularization and development of our society as the most reading in the world. My research is based on…

The teacher talked about various aspects and roles of popular science storytelling, how it develops thinking, what are the statistics of this genre, all the data on the effect on the human body. And although he often used various terms, even students who might not have been familiar with these terms listened attentively to their teacher. Many of them have decided which university they will go to, and many of them have decided right now to become like their favorite teacher — teachers, those who will love their vocation with all their heart.

— ...Thus, in conclusion, we can say that the development of science fiction literature precisely in the above direction, and adoption as a strategy, will help in the development not only of literature itself, but also of our dear youth and the education in them of the great future of our state and all mankind!

The hall burst into applause, loud applause could be heard everywhere. Vasily Nikolaevich, who was sitting in the center, got up first, followed by all the others and continued to applaud Vadim Alexandrovich standing up. Members of the regional and city departments of public education warmly thanked Anatoly Valentinovich, who enthusiastically applauded the teacher, whom he always considered a friend and comrade.

After this story, Vasily Nikolaevich and Vadim Alexandrovich became strong comrades. They often met and discussed new problems of modern philology, came up with new concepts and even planned to publish a book…

Chapter three. Professor Vavilov

June 1999.

Vadim Alexandrovich was interested in literature and the Russian language from a very young age, and now that he was a teacher, he decided to give himself up to science. Of course, the work of a teacher is fascinating, but when you have to explain topics every day, if you really love science, there is an involuntary desire to create and learn amazing bins of science, whatever it may be.